Alone In The T-Shirt Zone

(1986)
Director: Mike B. Anderson
Writers: Mike B. Anderson, Kathleen Beeler

Alone In The T-Shirt Zone is a strange creature. I was initially drawn to the VHS copy of this film by the cover art. If there's one thing I can't resist it's a dumb 80's sex comedy, and this certainly looked like one. But then I turned it over to read the back and saw this:

Oookay, that doesn't look like a comedy to me, that looks like a straight up horror movie. I puzzled over the VHS for a few minutes, turning the tape back and forth in my hands, trying desperately to grasp the angle this movie was going for. The slyly evasive description on the back also straddled the line between sex comedy and horror movie and was no help. My curiosity and confusion finally got the best of me and I ended up paying a little more for a VHS tape than I usually would, just so I could figure this one out. Before I left with the tape, the guy selling it warned me. "That's a weird one."

He was right.

Directed by Mike B. Anderson, who would later go on to be a major force on The Simpsons, Alone In The T-Shirt Zone blazes a weird path that not everyone will be able to follow and even fewer will enjoy. The story begins with our main character Mike, nearly catatonic, in a psychiatric institution. When his female psychiatrist locks the door and begins raping him, he drifts off and remembers the events that led him here. Pretty dark stuff, huh? Well, not so much. You see, every dark plot twist and subplot somehow comes off fairly lighthearted. Like we're supposed to be laughing except for the fact that it isn't really funny. It's probably a good bet that the character of Mike is autobiographical for the director. Mike is an under-appreciated artist stuck in a dead-end job creating sexually suggestive t-shirts who finally snaps, escapes his job and, as the description on the back of the box puts it, "it spells trouble for all concerned". It's seems that Anderson was trying to craft a dark story to vent his frustrations, but it's filled with too many surreal and jokey moments to take seriously. And then the movie just sort of ends.

If it sounds like I didn't like Alone In The T-Shirt Zone, that's not my intention. It was very well made and kept me interested the whole time. And I thoroughly enjoyed the weirdness of it all. It's less like watching a movie and more like taking a strange journey where plot twists go nowhere and the things that you see may not actually be happening. I even got obsessed halfway through the film with a t-shirt I spied in the background that made as little sense to me as the movie itself:

I don't know why that's funny, but I also need a shirt of it just so I can confuse people!

Overall, it was a pretty enjoyable little film that I'm sure I'll revisit every once in a while. I'm also pretty curious to check out Mike B. Anderson's other film, a strange sounding sci-fi comedy called Kamillions. If you're a fan of weird experimental films and t-shirts, I would recommend Alone In The T-Shirt Zone. Just be careful. It's a weird one.



8 1/2 out of 12 beers.